Thursday, July 30, 2009

About an hour later I was suddenly jolted awake by a tremendous, window-shaking "boooooommmmm", mingled with a women's scream. My eyes flew open, just in time to see the darkened livingroom be illuminated by a small shower of sparks in the sky. (I am amazed with how fast our bodies react to a situation before we even consciously know what is happening). S. and I hurried to the windows and parted the mini blinds, expecting to see the worst. Instead, we saw nothing.

Yup, nothing but a regular ol' street at 2:00 in the morning...it was dark and a few cars were parked on the street. We noticed one of the street lights seemed a little dark, but even that wasn't very noticeable. A few minutes later people from the different apartment buildings in the area slowly filtered onto the street. The first out there were two women, both with cell phones in hand. As a few other concerned citizens made their way street level, S. and noticed that they seemed to be looking up at one of the street lights/power lines and congregating around a parked car that had a small amount of debris on it. (From our fourth floor apartment, it seemed as if one of the neighbors that took to the street was a large, bald, army boot wearing man, with a shotgun slung over his shoulder. Obviously my point of view must have seriously skewed this man's appearance, because those on the street didn't seem the bit troubled by his presence...Thank god.) :-)

So what else happened? A police car zoomed by with its lights on (but no siren) and didn't stop, everyone went back into their respective buildings, one neighbor from across the street came back outside with his camera and took pictures of the power pole and the car below it, another cop car came by, but this time it was using its search light on the opposite side of the street, and the electric company showed up in their big, yellow monster of a truck. They got out, shined their uber powerful flashlight on the darkened street lamp, got back inside their vehicle, consulted some sort of giant manual, and left.

See you later electrical guys...see you the next time we have a hot sweaty mess!